153 



inquiry may perhaps appear trivial, but as a similar tradition is to be 

 found in two other places in England, and no reasonable cause can 

 be suggested why the door of a church should be covered with skin, 

 except from such motive as has been assigned, the question may not 

 be wholly devoid of interest, were it only as regards the durability of 

 human skin, exposed to the atmosphere in such manner. 



I remain, Sir, yours faithfully, 



Albert Way. 



On this specimen, which was about an inch long and half an inch 

 wide, I succeeded in finding two hairs, and thus communicated to 

 Mr. Way the result of their examination, "I have carefully investigated 

 the portion of skin which you forwarded to me for my inspection, and 

 beg to inform you that I am perfectly satisfied that it is human skin, 

 taken from some part of the body of a light-haired person, where little 

 hair grows. A section of the specimen, when examined with a power 

 of a hundred diameters, shows readily that it is skin, and two 

 hairs which grow on it I find to be human hairs, and to present the 

 characters that hairs of light-haired people do. The hairs of the 

 human subject differ greatly from those of any other mammalian ani- 

 mal, and the examination of a hair alone, without the skin, would have 

 enabled me to form a conclusion. 1 may state that this is the second 

 occasion in which from the hairs alone I have been enabled to pro- 

 nounce an animal substance to be human." 



In reply, I received this second communication. 



(No. 2.) 



Wonham, Reigate, 

 June, 4, 1847. 

 Dear Sir, 



On my return home this evening I found your 

 obliging and very satisfactory reply to my inquiry, and I hasten to re- 

 turn you my sincere thanks for your kind attention to my request. I 

 must confess that I had almost feared you would have thought my 

 curiosity of too trifling a nature to induce you to bestow on the little 

 fragment I sent you such a scientific opinion as you have given me. 

 I must remark that if Cuvier had not set us the example of eliciting 

 valuable information from vestiges of the most trivial nature, we might 

 not have attached so much importance to the evidence which may be 



